Il balcone

This is absolutely NOT a film for the theatrically illiterate or anyone who cannot accept a film which is less than realistic and into the exploration of the fantasies film is supposed to look at (dare we admit it is stage influenced - but not stage bound?). Those who simply want a mindless night at a "fun" film had best look elsewhere, but for anyone who has a mind and enjoys using it, who knows what Existentialism is, or who enjoys really good acting in demanding texts, the 1963 adaptation Ben Maddow made of Genet's 1959 draft of THE BALCONY in consultation with the original author is close to a "must see." Moving smoothly from the horrifying stock footage of the wartime rioting as the Germans were withdrawing from Paris and radicals were wreaking vengeance on "collaborators" (representing an unnamed country in revolution) through shots establishing a very young and handsome Leonard Nimoy as a revolutionary the film quickly settles into the studio produced isolation of a prominent brothel where clients can act out any fantasy and Genet can use these fantasies to examine the nature of power and relationships - even for a moment drawing back the tenuous curtain separating fantasy and reality.

Top billed Shelly Winters as the madame may never have given a better, subtler performance, and the later all to irritating (as television's Columbo) Peter Falk gives a performance of sustained intensity as a man who thinks he's in charge of his destiny - very reminiscent of the best Twilight Zone work.

All too often overlooked in the uniformly solid cast are Ruby Dee (between her stage triumphs in PURLIE VICTORIOUS and A RAISIN IN THE SUN and recreating them on film) as a woman on trial, Jeff Corey (a versatile character actor with over 200 movie and TV credits including everything from Perry Mason to Star Trek) as "the Bishop," Kent Smith (with a resume akin to Corey's but possibly best known as Peter Keating in the movie of THE FOUNTAINHEAD) as the "General" and famously Blacklisted Lee Grant (just coming off that painful period) as one of Ms. Winters' "girls." Despite the brilliance of all concerned, the film has had its problems It was made at a time when, even if independent films could get around the political bigotry of the previous decade, they were still not immune to the pressure of a sexual puritanism which had a major studio first force a damaging rewrite then refuse to issue an important Billy Wilder film (KISS ME STUPID) under its own name because it appeared to endorse infidelity. The screenplay of THE BALCONY is, on many levels, "tamer" than the stage version. The castration of a character is eliminated as are most homosexual references and exposed skin is kept to a minimum, and it may have been still further Bowdlerized in regional release, but the essential ideas are there for any with the wit to explore them.

If you're up to it (and many viewers will recognize that Rod Serling clearly was), this is a journey through time and space - and one's mind - well worth taking.

The transplanting of Genet's writing to film is odd indeed. It feels strongly allegorical, and it is: it's about a made-up revolution going on in the streets, violent scenes of apocalyptic fighting, where the two opposing forces, the police chief and the leader of the revolution, meet in a brothel where fetishistic sex scenes are enacted. So Genet's play seems at first to be about how sex binds, but it's more a post-modern sort of play, where all is an illusion and we play roles -- in Genet's world, our choices are governed by sex (which the film's comic ending uses to end the conflict through nakedness).

That's all well and good, but the revolutionary aspect doesn't come together too well, because the mocking of people who believe anyone who's presented to them isn't really successful; it's told more than it's dramatized. (Three joes from the brothel who act out their fetish scenes are made to participate in the battle outside as the people they play in the brothel.) The fakeness of the sets (complete with fake horse neighs and jury murmurs for the various acting out of fetish scenes) makes intellectual sense to go along with the fakeness of the rest of it (Winters' closing line is great), but the literal, set-like play, and the lousy stock footage, takes away from the melodrama, I think. It's a little difficult to watch, and the direction isn't very good; the decadence, the threats made by Falk, some of the lines -- it'd work better on the page. But it becomes larger as it goes along, and is successful in an unconventional way.

The strangest moments are the emotional ones, where emotion pierces through the artifice -- which, honestly, is rare, almost limited to the scene where the man licks the prostitute's shoe and she begins to cry, or the one where a prostitute-turned-file-clerk longs to be a prostitute again just for an hour. The most instantly recognizable Genet-like image is the one of Nimoy behind bars, his hairy chest exposed. Nimoy, whose appearance is brief, is very good here; he has the emotion through movement that Falk instead strains for. If Daniel Day-Lewis was doing Columbo in "Gangs of New York," then Falk is doing Bill the Butcher, with his German-Southern accent, mustache, and histrionics.

The three men from the brothel are necessarily flaky -- they seem to be acting in another film. I think the awesome Shelley Winters is the only one who really nails her performance: her recognizable inflection, the effortless "a" pauses in her speech, the svelte hand movements; she's most in tune to what's going on, and she pulls it off beautifully. There's a startling kiss between her and a girl from the brothel that must have been a jolt to audiences at the time; it still seems violent, even though it's done seemingly out of affection. 8/10

Failed minds, postmodernists who recognize no means of defining the categories of reality, and recognize no hard-and-fast universe of what is real and what is not are "impractical" at achieving any sort of results; how could anyone unable to define what a film is confront an allegorical work of art? How, I ask could anyone understand a one-to-one correspondence between a 'second level of reference' and a primary one, if one is helpless to comprehend the priorities and internal-dynamic properties of the first? Case in point: the way in which imprecise thinkers try, mentally, to approach Joseph Strick's well-paced filmic version of Jean Genet's "The Balcony". "The Balcony" is a favorite film of mine; not because of its obscurity, and I grant it can be read in several ways at some places; I like it rather because its author tries to deal with the false philosophy of "postmodernism" itself; this is a film used for exposing its utter vacuousness. The way the author, and Ben Maddow in his perceptive screenplay, tried to show why pretension, authority-structures and believers are an endless circle of meaningless human shells was devastatingly simple. The author staged a revolution, in an unnamed urban city. Instead of dealing with specifics, the filmmaker followed his plot line by providing graphic images of what happens during any rebellion or revolt--a categorical expose of rebellions and revolutions as violent exercises of disagreement by dissidents; then he confined the dramatic action for the most part to a brothel; there under the direction of Madame (Shelley Winters) and her assistant (Lee Grant), clients play out their fantasies about power--using women as their paid "victims", co-participants and surrogate result-receivers and perpetrators. The Madam's boy friend, the real Chief of Police, (Peter Falk) then enters and is desperate. The General of the army, the Bishop of the Church and the the chief Justice of the country have all been killed; Madam suggests replacements--her best clients are better than the originals at these roles. He is persuaded. So are they. But once they have been sworn in outside, the rebellion gets real for them too. And they, and the rebel leader and the chief, are all driven back inside, to confront the emptiness of their exercises of power--the fact that only power over the real universe and oneself matter; that any other sort of "power- mongering" is meaningless after all; since pretensions are universal and a pragmatic structure that argues only that, "The Establishment needs to be maintained", its proponents forget that this is as anarchistic a premise as is anarchy--"any rebellion on any terms"--would have been. In the film, there are a few moments that seem like stage moments; but most of the narrative I suggestis fought out on a idea-level far above the average film. As the Madam, Shelley Winters is very capable but seems to play the film on too literal a level here and there; Grant is much slyer and in keeping with the spirit of the work. As the police chief, Falk keeps his difficult role this side of surreality with considerable skill; as his opponent, Leonard Nimoy seems very capable also. As the three power figures, Kent Smith as the General is superb, full-voiced, authoritative and compelling; Jeff Corey makes an arch Bishop, intellectual and devious; and Peter Brocco as the Judge is a well-trained classic actor also, very much capable of delivering judgments. As the women they boss over and are controlled by, Arnette Jens, Joyce Jameson and Ruby Dee are all very good and very intelligent; it is to be regretted all have been denied more work in films and the longer parts they deserved to play. The film's ending is celebrated; as some reviewers have noted, the ending working as well on film as it did in the staged version--you will have to view the film to judge this point for yourself; but the film seems to have been made yesterday, as others have suggested largely because its authors handle ideas about reality on a level of categorical truth, not specifics. George Folsey is credited with the cinematography, which is quite varied and difficult; the remainder of the credits are those of the original stage production used here in a translated fashion. The use of the characters within the brothel to comment upon the actions going on in the outside world needs to be noted; this chorus-like rediscovery, notable in "Pride and Prejudice" for instance, is a genuine reviving of an idea-level often missing from post WWII works. The title "The Balcony" refers to the idea that those not immediately engaged in activities within the "house" are spectators of reality, hence able to comment upon its ongoing progress; this also means they can do so in a sense relative to the world outside their limited mini-universe, being detached observers like those in a theatrical "balcony". I urge everyone interested in powerful drama to give this interesting "stunt" or limited-allegory of the world a try. I am an admirer of its purpose and of its execution.

I admit that the movie is a little slow at times, but the plot and the circumstances, and the celebrities in this film are enough to make it worthwhile. The power struggle scene between Leonard Nimoy and Peter Falk seems to be almost homo-erotic. And seeing Shelley Winters kiss another woman. Too much! This movie is one of my favorites!

I really was expecting a "skin flick" based on its lobby cards when I first saw this film adaptation of Jean Genet's "The Balcony" in the summer of 1963, but I was definitely in for an awakening -- rude perhaps but definitely an awakening.

I recommended the film to the owner of Gainesville, Florida's independent movie theater based on the original road show I had seen; however, I had to eat my words when he was only able to book the bowdlerized version that was available for distribution only a few short months after the film's original release. Perhaps too many people had been lured into theaters by the lobby card promise of a "skin flick" and were upset when they were greeted with a film that actually made the audience think for a change.

I rented the DVD today and watched the uncut version of "The Balcony" for the first time since that original viewing some 43 years ago. I took notice of the grainy stock footage used in most of the exterior scenes and compared them with the crisp images of the interior of the TV studio sound-stage, Madame Irma's house of illusions, and I wondered if this might not have been deliberate -- reality is actually grainy and slightly out of focus while our fantasy world is crisply delineated but still patently phony as when Peter Falk as George, the Chief of Police, breaks through the kraft-paper door or when the rocks -- in the Leonard Nimoy as Roger fantasy -- oscillate when touched.

Shelley Winters was ideal as Irma; I cannot think of another actress working in 1963 who could have done better in the part. The rest of the cast was also exceptional.

One note concerning another comment about Peter Falk's accent being Southern and German -- surely this was said in jest? Falk's accent was a combination of his native New York accent and a put-on Latin American/Spanish accent if it was anything. Again, that mixture of accents was in keeping with the part and with the fantasy.

"The Balcony" was definitely worth watching again some 43 years after I saw it during its first run. Will I still think so if I watch it after another 43 year interim? I think I probably will. . . .